China jailed number of journalists for their coverage on the COVID-19: CPJ report
New Delhi: China has arrested many journalists and sent them to jail for their coverage on coronavirus pandemic, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in its latest report.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an American independent non-profit, non-governmental organization, based in New York City and promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.
According to CPJ’s annual global survey – at least 274 journalists have been jailed as on December 1, exceeding the high of 272 in 2016.
Latest report highlights that “China, which arrested several journalists for their coverage of the pandemic, was the world’s worst jailer for the second year in a row. It was followed by Turkey, which continues to try journalists free on parole and arrest new ones; Egypt, which went to great lengths to keep custody of journalists not convicted of any crime; and Saudi Arabia,”
47 prisoners in China are serving long sentences or are jailed in Xinjiang without any charge disclosed, report says.
Chinese authorities had arrested many journalists in Wuhan city when the virus started to spread and journalists had started to report on it.
“The three still jailed on December 1 include independent video journalist Zhang Zhan, who began posting reports from Wuhan on Twitter and YouTube in early February and was arrested on May 14. Her videos include interviews with local business owners and workers on the impact of COVID-19 and the government’s response to it,” the CPJ said.
In China most of the media outlets are heavily censored or controlled by the state but Zhang Zhan was one of several journalists in CPJ’s global census, who heavily relied on social media.
“Her videos are likely still available to a global audience because they are hosted by companies outside China. But CPJ found that similar content produced by others who were later jailed had been taken down for reasons that were not clear, hindering research and underscoring longstanding concerns about transparency by global tech giants like Google, Twitter, and Facebook,” the CPJ said.
Australian citizen Cheng Lei, a business news anchor for state run broadcaster China Global Television Network, was arrested in August for allegedly endangering national security amid tension between China and Australia, making her the second Australian journalist in custody after blogger Yang Hengjun, who has been held on espionage charges since January 2019, the report highlighted.
_Vinayak
